A Good Novel Is A Conjunction Of

This Fact Was Something I Also Learned From This First Novel That I Needed Personal Experience To Invent, To Fantasize, To Create Fiction, But At The Same Time I Needed Some Distance, Some Perspective On This Experience In Order To Feel Free Enough To Manipulate It And To Transform It Into Fiction. If The Experience Is Very Close, I Feel Inhibited. I Have Never Been Able To Write Fiction About Something That Has Happened To Me Recently. If The Closeness Of The Real Reality, Of Living Reality, Is To Have A Persuasive Effect On My Imagination, I Need A Distance, A Distance In Time And In Space.

Memory Is A Snare, Pure And Simple; It Alters, It Subtly Rearranges The Past To Fit The Present.

Nothing Better Protects A Human Being Against The Stupidity Of Prejudice, Racism, Religious Or Political Sectarianism, And Exclusivist Nationalism Than This Truth That Invariably Appears In Great Literature: That Men And Women Of All Nations And Places Are Essentially Equal, And Only Injustice Sows Among Them Discrimination, Fear, And Exploitation.

Life Is A Shitstorm, In Which Art Is Our Only Umbrella." (spoken By Character In A Novel By Mario Vargas Llosa)

It Isn't True That Convicts Live Like Animals: Animals Have More Room To Move Around.